


New York City: What my sister told me

by Chord



Series: New York is City Magic [6]
Category: Matthew Swift Series - Kate Griffin, Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:08:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5333564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chord/pseuds/Chord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You seem to know a lot about Coyote. What are you hiding, hm?</p>
            </blockquote>





	New York City: What my sister told me

1\. Coyote is on the edges of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. The residents of those places...their eyes aren't entirely human. Their nails are really sharp. Like mine.

Run to Staten Island, if you must. He can't reach you there. he remembers the ash heaps, and he stays away.

 

2\. You'd think the Lady of the Lonely Road would have a tiny presence in NYC, but it is not so. She's just a bit different in cities. Everyone is [lonely](http://everything2.com/title/Secret+of+New+York) in NYC, after all, no matter how many people are on the road. She's not hard to banish, though. Just talk to a stranger. She will wail and blow away like a puff of smoke, and your shoes will not get stuck to the pavement by gum.

 

3\. Big Chief sits at the top of the tallest tower and watches out for Coyote. Coyote knows how to trick Big Chief. This will not end well. It never does. Why do you think there's no train from Brooklyn to Queens? Big Chief was overseeing that trolley project personally, but Coyote promised him that the full moon would shine every night if Big Chief would shift the funding to housing developments in Queens. Coyote got what he wanted and made the moon shine every night. Over a rapidly-electrifying NYC.

Big Chief realized he'd been tricked, and threw Coyote into an ash heap on Staten Island. That is why Coyote's fur is grey at the edges -- it's pretty hard to get rid of ash stains.

 

4\. Everybody blames Coyote for what Robert Moses did, but Coyote has an alibi. He says he never met Moses or got within a hundred miles of him. In fact, says Coyote, something about that man actively repelled Coyote. Big Chief says that of all the men he met, Moses was the one who had absolutely no magic in him.

 

5\. There has always been ,and will always be, a wall on Wall Street, until the city crumbles at last. Should the city be beset by enemies, The Wall will rise and surround Manhattan. Be sure to get into the city before that happens, because once the wall goes up, there's no gate to get in.

 

6\. On special Saturday nights, a figure with an alto saxophone appears on top of the big rock in Marcus Garvey park and plays out his soul. Some say he is mourning, but nobody knows what he's mourning for. Sometimes the police try to catch him. Sometimes they just enjoy the music.

 

7\. Everyone knows who Sylvia is, but nobody wants to see her. She only shows up when a protest turns into a riot. It has to start as a protest, too. Don't go starting a riot because you want to see Sylvia. You'll just get Grandmaster Flash, and he doesn't like to be summoned. Because he's not dead. 

 

8\. If you go to certain paved yards in The Bronx and you wait for the noise of traffic to ebb, listen real close. You can hear the echoes of the turntables and drum machines that played long ago.

 

9\. Lily Two-Rivers of Grenovia is supposed to succeed her father as Big Chief one day. And she will run The Little Prince Café as well, alongside Analosa Auditori. So what will happen when the ruler of the Manhattan people has the resources of Grenovia at her disposal? Coyote fears this possibility. He's been trying to catch Lily whenever she ventures out to the Bronx. Street poles fall, cars swerve, asphalt melts. It's getting so that she can't leave Manhattan without carrying a giant war club, which, while easy for her to carry, doesn't fit very well in the bus. She tried obsidian knives, but those break too easily, and hunting regulations effectively prohibit the use of bows, from Midtown Manhattan all the way to Long Island City. 

Lily has two options: she can let Analosa go alone to Long island City, and pay the Lady of the Lonely road to be an escort, or she can sacrifice a Harley-Davidson motorcycle to Coyote on each journey. Either one is expensive.

Or she can just get limes from Sal's on 47th street. But that guy plays Limp Bizkit all day. Yech.

 

10\. There's a cannon at the junction of 10th Avenue and Broadway, pointing towards the Bronx. It looks like a modern artillery piece. But old-timers swear that when they were young, it was a WWII-era 88mm gun. And photos from the late 19th century show it as a civil-war-era mortar. is someone switching them out?


End file.
